


Biding Time

by genarti



Category: Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Canonical Dystopia, Coming of Age, Created Family, Disguise, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Grief/Mourning, Identity, Minor Character Death, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zelda grows up, with work to be done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Biding Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



> Thanks for a really fun and fascinating prompt! I hope the results suit.
> 
> Thanks to my secret-as-yet betas, who helped enormously as always. (Also, a note: I tried to be as careful and respectful as I could in exploring the question of Zelda's gender identity, but if I failed anywhere, I apologize for that. Please feel free to point it out to me if you feel inclined to do so; I'd appreciate being told, and I promise to listen and not be defensive about it.)

"Come here, princess." Impa's callused hands are gentle on Zelda's head as she removes Zelda's crown and kerchief. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to go without this now."

Zelda had put them on this morning, like always, because a young princess of the Royal Family should wear both crown and kerchief every day in public, even if the public is only guards. Even if the public is only Gorons who might or might not come into the room. Ten years and six weeks old is old enough to be proper. She'd had to do it herself, because Impa had left by then for errands without saying what they were. She hadn't been able to get the folds of her kerchief quite right without a mirror or a maid to help. All day it had felt crooked, one way or another, no matter how she pushed and pulled at it. 

There's no one here but Impa, who sees her every night with her hair loose for sleep. This red rock cavern in the middle of Death Mountain holds three big clay jars, two lamps, and Arion's saddle and bridle, and that's it: no Gorons, no guards, no subjects of hers at all. (Impa is Impa. It's different.) All the same, her head feels strange and bare without its kerchief, now that Impa has said that. She wants to cover it with her hands.

"I understand," she says, and her own voice sounds funny to her. When she goes to visit the Zoras, and she swims with Princess Ruto, everything on shore sounds watery and wobbly and distant. That's what she sounds like now. "We have to hide from Gandondorf."

"That's right." Impa pinned up Zelda's hair this morning when Zelda asked her to, even though she hadn't washed it because Gorons don't have bathtubs, but she's taking out the pins now. Her fingers pluck them out deftly, one by one, as if they were arrows in a target. Zelda's hair tumbles down to her shoulders in thin ropes. 

She wants to cry. But she doesn't want to be a baby.

Impa tucks the pins away somewhere, and puts her hands on Zelda's shoulders. "I think we'll dye your hair," she says. Her voice is just like it's always been, calm and deep. Zelda knows Impa's sad too, but it doesn't show. "How does brown sound to you? Or would you rather red? Whatever you pick, princess, I'll dye mine to match. We're sticking together."

They always stick together. That's what a Sheikah bodyguard means. Impa always stays near Zelda.

But now she doesn't have any other family left. Impa is all she has.

"Okay," she says, and she's not crying, she's _not_. "I want brown."

Ganondorf's hair is red. She doesn't want red hair like his ever.

Impa leans forward and kisses Zelda's forehead, light and dry. She's never done that before. "It's a long play now," she murmurs. Impa doesn't ever fidget, she doesn't make useless gestures, but now her hands keep stroking over Zelda's ropes of loose hair. Her calluses snag on the fine strands, over and over, but Zelda doesn't want her to stop. "We'll defeat him. We can't stand against him now, but we'll bide our time. He's won the battle, but we'll win the war. We've got the Sages and the Sacred Realm and the Hero of Time, and we've got each other. And he doesn't have us."

It's been one day and seven hours since Zelda's mother and father died in pools of blood.

Zelda's hands clench tight at her sides. "We'll defeat his evil," she agrees, as firm as she can, as _angry_ as she can because if she's angry she won't start crying again, and Impa drops another kiss on her forehead.

Impa sits back on her heels and holds out one hand. She taught Zelda this: the Sheikah way to seal a promise. _It means a solemn oath_ , she told Zelda three years and two months and seventeen days ago, when she became Zelda's bodyguard instead of her mother's and promised to guard her always. Zelda promised back to listen to her, and to be worthy of a Sheikah's service. _This vow is sealed with blood and witnessed by the Three Goddesses. It's a promise for life. This is Neyru's Promise. It's only for very, very important things._

This is very important.

Zelda makes her face as smooth and royal as she can, just like her father taught her. She takes Impa's big brown hand between her own smaller ones, and Impa puts her other hand underneath. Three hands for the Triforce, one for the earth below; three hands for the Three Goddesses, and one for Hyrule.

"Together, my lady," says Impa, and Zelda tries to sound just as adult when she echoes, "Together, my Sheikah."

* * *

Zelda isn't Zelda anymore, except at night. At night, when no one else is around, Impa calls her princess in a quiet voice. They sit cross-legged, Sheikah style, facing each other across the bright woven rug that came with this little house in Kakariko Village, and they have lessons. Impa teaches her history and politics and legends of the long-ago. She's even stricter than she used to be in Hyrule Castle, when they had these lessons on the grass in sunlight, and Zelda had three other teachers and a dance-master. She makes Zelda practice the proper ways to greet Gorons and Zora and even the Gerudo. (But never, ever the Gerudo King.) At night, in the firelight, she's Princess Zelda, and Impa is a Sheikah guard, and there's a small square of four walls where nothing can hear them or harm them.

Outside, in the daytime, Zelda is a boy named Remmy, with scruffy brown hair cut short and a gap in his smile, because Zelda just lost a front tooth. Impa is Remmy's aunt Bemma. She wears long skirts like Sheikah never do, and her hair and brows and even her eyelashes are brown like Remmy's.

Remmy thinks of himself as Zelda still, but he doesn't say so to anybody. He doesn't mind being a boy, though. It's safer, Impa said, because Ganondorf is looking for a girl; he's looking for a princess. Zelda doesn't care whether she's a girl or he's a boy, so Zelda's decided the clothes are what matters. 

In Kakariko, Bemma and Remmy make arrows. They sell them to the new shooting gallery, where Timmen lets them shoot for free in trade for a cheap price, and they sell them to merchants, and they sell them to pedlars. Nobody goes outside the village unarmed now. Remmy practices at the shooting gallery, and practices fighting with the other kids in the village, and doesn't tell them that Zelda learns better combat skills in secret with a Sheikah. There are whispers of awful things at night: ghosts and skeletons and bobbing lights.

Zelda knows what those things are. Stalfos and Poe, called up by Ganondorf's evil powers. It's only going to get worse. Impa told her so, and she can feel the truth of it. Every time she looks at the dark cloud over Hyrule Castle Town, it makes her feel sick. The Sacred Realm has been twisted, and evil spreads out of it like smoke. And something happened to Link -- not Ganondorf, she knows that, because she's dreamed about it, but all the same he was sealed away, and he's going to be sealed for years. Six and a half years more. The magic is like a knot in the pit of her stomach, as if Rauru sealed a little part of her away too, or maybe sealed Link away inside her. It doesn't hurt, but she can always feel it. It's one more thing that's wrong.

Remmy can't say any of that, though. Remmy is supposed to be just a village boy. He can drop hints, but he can't say anything, because he doesn't know the things Zelda knows. He just knows how to make arrows like his aunt taught him. He wears fingerless gloves because they're cool, not to hide the Triforce that sits like a pale stamp on the back of his right hand.

It's been seven months exactly. Ganondorf has ruled Hyrule for seven months, with the Triforce of Power on his hand, and Remmy is stuck making _arrows_.

Some days, he wants to scream.

"Hard at work, huh?" laughs a man's voice, and Remmy's head jerks up. It's old man Yan, of course. He says that every time he sees him. But Remmy didn't even hear him coming. _That's dangerous, princess_ , he scolds himself. Impa's words. _Watch with a Sheikah's eyes. Hear with a Sheikah's ears._ Yan, oblivious, continues, "On a sunny day like today, a boy like you should be playing by the windmill!"

"I'm okay," says Remmy, and makes himself smile wide and carefree. The afternoon isn't even all that sunny; it never is, anymore. "I want to get this batch of arrows finished. How are you, Mr. Yan?"

"Oh, I'm okay." He leans in, conspiratorially. "Got a lead from my daughter on some purebred Hylian Herder puppies. That'll make me a few rupees, just you wait and see! People still want good dogs, even now!"

Yan is his subject too, even if Remmy can't say so. That means Remmy needs to listen to him, and care about him no matter how much Zelda wants to scream that puppy bloodlines and rupees and arrows don't _matter_. "That's great, Mr. Yan!" he says, which is all Yan wants to hear anyway. 

"Well, gotta be off!" Yan says, because he says that every time too. "Bye now!" And off he jogs.

Remmy wants to be Zelda right now. He wants to do magic and storm straight down to Hyrule Castle and shoot these arrows straight at Ganondorf. He wants to find Impa, and he wants to yell no matter how unsafe it is to yell about anything Zelda knows. He wants his mother and father back to hug _right now_ and everything to be just another horrible dream, but it's horrible reality, and he's stuck here doing nothing but _hiding_ and having stupid old men tell him stupid cheerful things about stupid _puppies_.

Remmy glares at the arrow in his hand until he realizes that he's fletched both ends of it. And that's the last straw, somehow. He flings it to the ground and runs into the house, and this is breaking all of Impa's rules about how to act when he's Remmy but he doesn't care. He feels like a Bomb Flower, about to explode.

Impa is inside. Nobody else is, which is good, because it means that Impa can be Impa instead of just Bemma, and Zelda doesn't think he can pretend anything right now. Impa's eyes go wide, and her left hand darts inside the jar where Zelda knows she keeps her sword and her Smoke Seeds. Impa always sits right next to that jar.

Zelda throws the bundle of arrows to the ground as hard as he can. He's not supposed to, and he'll feel bad about it later, but right now he gets a mean satisfaction out of it. He'd feel better if they broke, but they just bounce and clatter.

Impa's hand comes back out of the jar, empty.

"I'm not doing anything!" Zelda hisses. He keeps it quiet so no one outside can hear. There are tears in his eyes, hot as the magma inside Death Mountain. "I'm just sitting here!"

Impa rises. She walks past Zelda and closes the door. One smooth gesture, and green light rises in a circle around them both: a Silence Shield.

"I'm supposed to be their princess!" Zelda cries. It feels good to shout, too, but it's not enough. "I'm supposed to hold Hyrule together! I'm supposed to fight Ganondorf! I'm not supposed to, to sit here making arrows!" Impa crosses her arms, listening, and Zelda really is crying now, from sheer anger. He scrubs at his eyes. "He's just, he's, he's turning the Sacred Realm evil and he's making Hyrule horrible and I'm not doing anything!"

There are more words bubbling inside of him but there are too many of them, it's as if all the things he wants to say are fighting behind his tongue and he can't find the right words for any of them, and he's just crying now, sobbing like he hasn't in months. 

Impa lets him cry for a little while. Then her footsteps approach: one, two, three, and in a swift rustle of Bemma's skirts she kneels. Zelda dashes tears out of his eyes, but there are still more blurring his vision, and his nose is running messily. "Princess," she says. "This is a holding game now. You know that. Impatience will play right into Ganondorf's hands."

"I'm not impatient!" Zelda yells into the silence spell. "I'm not holding for anything! Maybe you are, but you don't tell me the plan, I'm just sitting here being Remmy, doing nothing!"

Impa does something she hasn't done in months. She pulls Zelda into a hug.

It's stiff and awkward, and it's nothing at all like hugging Zelda's mother or father, and suddenly all Zelda can do is sob into her neck, loud and messy like a little kid, and cling to Bemma's shirt that always hangs loose on Impa's warrior's body.

"You're not doing nothing," Impa murmurs. "You're staying alive, princess. You're staying alive until you've got the opening to do more." She strokes one hand over Zelda's shaggy hair. Despite months as Bemma, she still has all of Impa's calluses, and they still snag on tangles. "But maybe you're right. If we're very careful, and you do everything I say, I think we can go back to working on your magic. Would that be enough for now?"

It's something to do. Zelda can't attack Ganondorf with fletching skills, or with polite greetings and the history of Hyrule, but magic...

Zelda nods, sniffling, and Impa strokes his hair again.

Nothing is okay. Nothing is okay at all. But he can do something useful, and that's something.

* * *

She's not Remmy anymore. Remmy and Bemma moved away from Kakariko, because it's not safe to stay under one set of names for more than a year or so, Impa said. If Remmy and Bemma ever come back, Impa and Zelda will have to think up a good story to explain where they were all this time. Coming back is hard, but disappearing is easy. Everyone will just think they've been killed by monsters, or turned into Stalfos or ReDead.

There are more and more monsters. There are more and more ReDead, too. Every day, more evil influence streams out from Hyrule Castle and the Evil Realm that used to be sacred. Zelda can't remember the last day that wasn't at least a little overcast, and Death Mountain streams fire and smoke in a continual plume from its summit.

She's Ulla now, and a girl again. Zelda chose that; it made a change from Remmy, and she wanted to wear skirts again and feel like a girl all day. Ulla and her grandmother Malla are traders. (Impa's white hair doesn't need to be dyed for this role, but she has to wear layers and layers of old lady clothes, and pretend that she has aches and pains.) They travel Hyrule, buying from one person and selling to another somewhere else. 

Zelda thinks, privately, that Remmy and Bemma should have done this too. She knows that Impa wanted to keep her in town until she'd learned more of magic and fighting, but this is so much more useful. They can travel from Lake Hylia to Goron City and from the Zoras' Domain to Lonlon Ranch, and no one will wonder why they're covering so much ground over and over. Traders have to do these things. No one will think that maybe this is the missing princess and her bodyguard, keeping tabs on the various corners of the kingdom.

Zelda knows that Impa does better at keeping tabs than she does. Often, Zelda doesn't know what she should have been looking for until Impa discusses it with her later. But she's trying. She keeps her eyes open, and she listens. She wants to see and hear everything.

They're traveling now from Lake Hylia to the Forest, along with another family of traders. They won't go far in at all -- just to the edge, safely clear of the Lost Forest that was famous for turning people into ghosts even before Ganondorf, and well outside Kokiri Village where no grown-ups are allowed at all. That's why the other traders have their grandson Koro along, even though he's just a little kid. The perpetual children of Kokiri Village won't talk to adults at all; Impa's heard that they talk even to children less and less. No one's sure, Impa said, if that means that they're hiding away in their forest village, or if there are fewer and fewer Kokiri. Zelda hopes fiercely for the former, but she doesn't know either. The Lost Woods turn children into Skull Kids, and there are Poes haunting Hyrule Field and the Forest's edge. What other monsters is Ganondorf's evil influence making in the heart of the Forest?

She sleeps that night back to back with her guardian. Ulla and Malla don't have to hide much of Zelda and Impa's skill, even if Malla tries not to fight up close where people would wonder at a grandmother's strength of arm, and Ulla can't use more than the most basic magic Zelda knows. But nobody wonders anymore at traders who can fight. Torches and masks aren't enough now. The only traders still traveling are the ones who can defend themselves, or the ones who can pay for somebody else to defend them.

She dreams of fire, spreading across the mountains, pouring down their slopes like rain, burning up the plains, burning up everything. She dreams of the Hero of Time, floating in a column of white light. In the morning, they reach the Forest.

Malla runs a hand over Ulla's pigtails, and Zelda knows what Impa isn't saying: _be careful, be watchful, come back safe_. Koro's parents kiss his forehead and give him a dozen reminders, do this and don't do that and listen to Ulla. He clings to her hand as they walk down the path to the Forest.

The air smells green. In the corner of her eyes, Zelda can see flickering motes of light swooping and dancing.

For the first time in a long time, she thinks of Link. Not the Hero of Time, not the chosen hero, but Link, the Kokiri boy with his green tunic and wide eyes, and his hands still smudged with forest dirt. Link came from this forest.

Koro squeezes her hand tight, and leans into her arm. Zelda-- no, Ulla smiles down at him reassuringly, and keeps walking.

She stops a few dozen yards in, and Koro immediately stops with her. "Hello?" Ulla calls.

There's music in the air, a bright dancing tune.

It's pipe music -- no, it's _ocarina_ music. Zelda realizes that as a child's form fades into view: a girl about her age, with green clothes and green hair as if the Forest itself gave birth to her. She's playing an ocarina, and her eyes are half closed.

"What's that?" whispers Koro, tugging on Ulla's hand.

"It's a song I made up," says the girl. Ulla likes her voice, but she misses the song. The girl glances down at the instrument in her hand. "Oh, do you mean this? It's an ocarina, of course. Don't you have those?"

Koro shakes his head.

Ganondorf has banned them, because the Ocarina of Time is still out of his grasp. Would Ulla know that? Zelda decides on an impulse that it doesn't matter. Ganondorf can't come here. "The Evil King has forbidden them," she says. "But some people still play in secret. That's a really pretty song."

"Thanks!" The girl smiles at them both. "People say it makes them want to dance. Oh, I'm Saria."

"I'm Ulla," says Ulla, "and this is Koro."

They need to trade, to tell Saria that they want Deku nuts and Deku sticks and hazelnuts and willow bark and anything else the Kokiri want to trade them, and offer fabric and metal and all the rest of the list the adults gave them in return. They need to get back before everyone starts to worry that they went too far into the Lost Wood.

But Ulla wants to hear some more of Saria's music first, and listen to more of her cheerful speech. She thinks -- Zelda thinks -- that maybe they could be friends, if only they had more time.

It's much later, on her way out of the Forest, that the idea comes to her. She hesitates, but -- but surely if she's careful, she can do good with this, right? Impa tells her that the princess is an inspiration even to people who don't know where she is or what she looks like, that it gives them hope to think Princess Zelda is alive somewhere. And Saria knew Link. They were friends. Zelda couldn't ask that, but she guessed it, even before Saria asked if they'd seen a Kokiri boy named Link anywhere in Hyrule. She sounded like she missed him.

(It's a strange thought, Link as an ordinary boy with friends. Zelda has gotten used to thinking of Link as her own private secret, the chosen hero of her prophetic dreams and the Hero of Time sealed away in the Temple of Light. But he was a kid, too.)

Zelda doesn't have time to do much. She lets Koro run on ahead to find his parents, and she scrabbles immediately in her apron pocket for paper and pencil. All she finds is a tiny scrap, too small to use; she'll have to use a leaf.

She hunkers down to write on it, quick but careful. _Penmanship matters_ , said her mother -- but Zelda can't think about her mother now.

DON'T LOSE HOPE, says the leaf's message. LOVE, YOUR PRINCESS.

She rolls up the leaf, and stuffs it into a Deku nut. She drops the nut in the middle of the path, here where no adults can come, and definitely not Ganondorf. But maybe someone -- Saria, or another Kokiri -- will find it. She wants them to.

Zelda pushes herself up, and Ulla runs towards the exit to the Forest. 

She'll ask Impa, she thinks. Impa will help her figure out how to hide notes like this so that she can leave them in other places, too. If Zelda's life gives her people hope, then she needs to let them know that they can keep on hoping.

* * *

Zelda has seen Lake Hylia nearly drained, and crept near to the smoking top of Death Mountain. He's seen the Zora's Domain locked in unnatural ice, all the Zoras suspended and half-alive within. He's seen the edges of the Forest, grown quieter and quieter except for the howls of Wolfos and the clattering cries of Keese. He's seen Kakariko Village get dimmer and dimmer beneath the perpetual clouds, and its houses grow crowded with refugees. He's heard their stories. He's dropped Deku nuts here and there, each one stuffed with a note from Princess Zelda, all of them set to show the note on various timed delays -- a week here, three months there -- so no one can trace his path by following the notes. A princess listens to his people; a princess is the one who has to hold his kingdom together.

(Ganondorf doesn't think so, but Ganondorf doesn't know anything about ruling. He thinks his rule is secure, just because his magic is strong. He thinks a princess is a pretty girl, a pretty hostage he could hold over her people's hearts. Zelda knows from his wanted posters that Ganondorf thinks the princess is being hidden by sympathetic townsfolk somewhere, still in her kerchief and skirts. He doesn't understand at all: a princess is the heir of the Royal Blood, and a princess does whatever Hyrule needs its rulers to do. A princess doesn't hold the throne -- a queen does, and Zelda's mother who was Zelda too is dead but Zelda hasn't taken her place yet -- but a princess has the right to become queen and ruler, and no one else does except with the princess or queen's agreement. Not a prince, not in Hyrule, and anyway the name _Zelda_ means _princess_ , no matter if this Zelda is a boy as often as not. Zelda is one of a long line of Zeldas, and the weight of that legacy is something that Ganondorf will never comprehend.)

Zelda's seen every other corner of Hyrule in the four years (three years, eleven months, seventeen days and three hours) since they fled, but he's never been back to Hyrule Castle Town. It's too close under Ganondorf's nose, Impa always said. They both know how to hide their magic, but a woman (and, for some reason, Impa is always a woman) and a teenager of the right age might be conspicuous even with hair dye and disguises, and Ganondorf is always looking. If they get caught, Hyrule Castle Town is too much a fortress. There are too few gates to escape by, and too many of Ganondorf's Gerudo and troops.

It was okay for a while. Zelda was, deep in his heart, afraid to go back. But it hasn't been okay for a long time, because a princess listens to _all_ his people. A princess holds together the whole kingdom. Not just the safe parts. He's argued this with Impa this, again and again.

Ganondorf flew to the desert in a streak of green, vile magic this morning. Impa agreed, then, that they could go. 

They're back to living in Kakariko Village -- as Gari and his grandmother Mari now, refugees and occasional pedlars. Impa wanted to keep an eye on her hometown again, and Zelda felt like a boy and wanted to dress like it too; he was tired of being Ulla in her skirts and girlish manners. Being pedlars means they can travel now and again, to keep tabs on the kingdom or to spar in secluded spots in the foothills. It's easy enough to say they're going to trade today, and not tell anyone where.

They walk. Impa is silent the whole way. Zelda matches her, but tells himself defiantly that he's confident.

This works, right up until they get to town.

The drawbridge is a broken wreck. He knew that, he'd seen it, but Impa had never let him get close, and he didn't _understand_ until now -- the whole town is this broken. The whole town is a ruin.

There are dozens of ReDead crouched in the streets. There aren't any people.

Zelda hadn't realized until now that for all the stories he'd heard, all the refugees he'd met, he'd still seen Hyrule Castle Town as its old self: green grass, clean waters, strong stones joined into secure houses. He'd imagined some kind of pall from Ganondorf like the one over Kakariko Village, dimness and grime and creeping horrors to be fought back so that people could cling to some kind of normal life.

There's no life here to _be_ normal.

This city used to be the beating heart of Hyrule.

(Maybe, Zelda thinks numbly, it still is. Hyrule's heart has been crushed, and it can barely limp onward.)

"We can go," Impa murmurs beside him. She's in Mari's dress and apron, her face wrinkled by enchantment, but her body language is all hard lines and readiness.

A ReDead moans.

"No," says Zelda. He barely recognizes the harshness of his own voice. "No. I need to see."

He slips forward, soft boots silent on the broken pavement. Impa follows; Zelda can't see her face, and doesn't want to look back. He needs to watch the ReDead, and he needs to watch his city.

They slip between the ReDead like ghosts themselves. A few moan, but none rise to shuffle towards them. None scream their paralytic shriek. Blind heads turn, seeking emptily, and sink back to rest on skeletal knees and chests. Zelda leads the way down alleys and through empty squares that used to be marketplaces, by the rusted fountains where children used to splash, through rotting holes that used to be the sturdy doors of houses. Impa follows. It's like a training exercise -- Impa usually follows Zelda in those, the Sheikah bodyguard watching her princess's back, but in real combat with monsters she's always immediately taken the lead -- and that's one more layer of surreality. Zelda feels stretched between past and present, memory and horror, as if at any moment he might split in two. He used to be a little girl here, and the world was sunlit and happy. Again and again, he smudges tears away with the back of a glove. He needs to see.

The whole city is the same. All of Hyrule Castle Town is dead. 

And Zelda is a naïve, dreaming child to be so shocked by what was in front of him all along.

Zelda doesn't dare to stare up at the shadowed, blackened keep that used to be Hyrule Castle. It reeks of evil magic. The portal to the Evil Realm is there and wide open, pouring out corrupting filth day and night. He rakes one look over his childhood home, as casually as he can -- no one's casual in Hyrule Castle Town, but just in case, just in case, Impa taught him to always hide, and the Hero of Time is still trapped away in his pocket of timelessness -- and turns away.

They leave.

He should turn to Impa once they're across the broken drawbridge, and say, _where should we go next?_ He doesn't. He's the princess, and Impa's his Sheikah, and Hyrule Castle Town is a mausoleum at the heart of a dying kingdom. Five steps forward -- ten -- and then he's running. He runs, and runs, and runs, until exertion is stabbing into his ribs and his leg muscles burn, and then he runs more. Impa keeps pace, but she's panting too; another day, Zelda would find that satisfying. Today he just pushes himself faster, faster, until he's stumbling.

"Nephew," says Impa, the way she says a word when she means _princess_.

Zelda pushes himself straighter with palms flat on his thighs. It feels like Goron boulders are resting on his shoulders. The tears are pushing their way forward again. Soon, they'll probably win.

"We can spend the night at the Laboratory," he says. They're near Lake Hylia. They can make it to cover.

They do.

Zelda spends most of the night thinking. He can't sleep, and anyway he doesn't want to dream. But eventually he does doze off to the familiar sound of Wolfos howling in the distant Forest. He dreams of the Hero of Time, a tall young man, and he dreams of Ganondorf's eyes with flames burning inside them.

When Zelda wakes up, dawn is a sullen glow in the east, and Impa is (as usual) already awake. She's caught some fish, and is making breakfast on the tiny stove. The lake scientists aren't here, and Zelda hopes they're all right. They travel, and they've made it back home every time so far, but you never know.

Zelda's still wearing Gari's clothes and Gari's hair, but this morning she feels like a she. Well, she doesn't really feel like either one -- some days she doesn't -- but enough of a she to go with. She pulls her shaggy boy's hair back into a tiny scrub of a ponytail. That's her signal to herself, since she has to stay Gari in public.

But they're not in public. The scientists aren't here, and they're behind four walls. Zelda pauses. Then she stands, and spreads her hands, calling on the magic that rests like a banked fire in the core of her. White light glows around her feet and behind her closed eyes. Fabric rustles into being around her.

Princess Zelda opens her eyes, and assesses her embroidered dress and regrown hair with a faint spark of satisfaction. It's not just an illusion; she actually transformed her hair and clothing. She's getting better at this.

Impa's brows are lifted. But all she says is, "Good morning, princess."

It's not a good morning. Nothing is good in Hyrule, and nothing is good after yesterday.

Zelda says, "I want to do more." Impa sits back on her heels, and Zelda rushes on before she can say, yet again, something about impatience and safety and waiting games. "The princess has to stay hidden. I know that. But I'm old enough to be doing more, and more needs to be done. I want to keep leaving the notes, but notes aren't enough. You've taught me Sheikah skills -- magic, fighting, the songs of the sages, how to use the Gossip Stones. Did you mean me only to store them up for later? The Hero of Time is still sealed away, but Hyrule needs me now."

Her heart is beating in her throat.

Impa studies her. "What do you intend?"

Not _what do you want to do_. Zelda swallows against the surge of elation.

"A man could go about the country," she says. "A young Sheikah man. Nothing like the princess. Everyone knows that Sheikah have mysterious skills and powers. If he started to fight monsters here and there -- if, perhaps, he used a Sheikah pipe or harp to travel between the Temples -- that would give people hope, wouldn't it? It would ease some of their pain."

Impa is silent for what feels like a long time. Princesses don't fidget, and neither do Sheikah, so Zelda clenches her teeth to keep still. The Sheikah people nearly died out in the civil war before Zelda was born; maybe Impa doesn't want Zelda claiming to be one of her people, no matter how many skills she taught her. She tries to get clues from Impa's face, but when Impa doesn't want to be read, her face is like a mask.

"He could travel with an older Sheikah," she says at last, and Zelda breathes again. For an instant, giddily, she almost wants to laugh, because Impa's level tone is so very pointed. "That would make sense."

"Yes," Zelda agrees. "It would be sensible. He's a young man still."

Impa snorts. "Don't get cocky, child." She stretches her neck to one side, then the other, and then stands in one of her quick decisive movements. "Well. I didn't think -- well." She nods to herself, just a little. "What's this young man's name?"

Zelda smiles at her guardian, small and proud. "I was thinking Sheik."

The legendary founder of the Sheikahs. No one is named that. For a Sheikah, it's a proud alias, and it's one any Sheikah could take; all of them can lay claim to it. It's as good as saying, _I'm everyone_.

After a moment, Impa laughs aloud.

"Too cocky by half," she says, but she sounds fond. "All right. If young Sheik can make me a good showing of his skills, he can start taking some careful wanders. His old teacher will follow along."

Everything else is still horrible, but all the same, Zelda can't help but grin at her. "Don't worry," she says. "He knows who to listen to."


End file.
